


There Is No Passion

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Coruscant (Star Wars), Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, JEDI AU, Jedi Knight Batman, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), and also an AU, because the Dark Side is full of supervillains and the evil plots are different, but we're really here for the character relationships, it's always all about Robin actually, jedi batman is a giant swordfighting nerd, prequel era i guess except the only canon jedi present is yoda, so probably a couple generations pre-prequel era?, temple drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:35:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22229524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: Bruce hadn’t set out to replace Dick.Much of the Order wouldn’t believe it if he said so, not that he would bother, but hehadn’t.
Relationships: Clark Kent & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 69
Kudos: 185





	1. There Is Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Master-Padawan drama and Batman-Robin drama have a lot in common okay. That's it, that's where this fic came from. Also I love Jedi Batman.

Bruce hadn’t set out to replace Dick.

Much of the Order wouldn’t believe it if he said so, not that he would bother, but he _hadn’t_.

Hadn’t lingered intentionally near the older Initiates, watching for potential. Hadn’t planned to fill the empty space in his Temple quarters with a new small set of limbs and lungs.

Hadn’t planned to forswear taking apprentices _forever_ , either, of course; it was his duty as part of the Jedi Order to pass his knowledge along and strengthen the next generation. After all, every Knight and Master who went without a Padawan might mean one more Initiate sent to the Service Corps who could have been an exemplary Jedi, had anyone been willing to train them.

But he’d intended to take a few years away from teaching, to find his own rhythms again and get used to the absence that lingered everywhere he still expected Dick’s familiar Force-presence. To finish letting go.

Deeply regretting things already past was nearly as unbefitting of a Jedi as the heated words themselves had been. He should never have let himself be provoked. He should have taught his apprentice better. Dick’s Knighting should have been a happy occasion.

He had released those emotions to the Force dozens of times. They kept coming back.

Before the arguments had started, and coldness opened between, Bruce had expected the eventual loss of his student’s braid to change nothing besides his right to give orders. It was not unheard-of for former master-padawan pairs to remain regular partners well into the student’s adulthood; the training bond never really broke until death, after all, and who knew each other better? Who better to fight beside?

Anyone, apparently. Had he truly been letting his emotions cloud his judgment? _Had_ Dick been ready to move on, long before he had thrown up his hands and permitted it? The boy was a prodigy, after all; Bruce had taken him to be trained well below the average age and few had considered it too early. But sixteen standard years, a Knight? No. It was too young. Some species matured quickly enough for it to be perfectly reasonable, but not Humans.

He had not simply been clinging, let alone trying to hold his student back. Nineteen was more than early enough.

It was _his_ responsibility that Dick had felt any need to be Knighted young, that their bond had been clouded with resentment, that he had increasingly retreated behind cold loyalty to the Code when anger threatened, and ceased to be a source of strength to his student…he couldn’t even blame Dick for _wanting_ to be quit of him, after the atmosphere that had prevailed so often over that last year of his training.

But he had not been wrong that the boy was too young.

Even now, part of him shuddered to think of the apprentice he had raised facing the galaxy without him, not even twenty standard years old. But that was fear born of attachment, and he _must_ let it go.

Bruce had been taking even more than his usual string of back-to-back missions since the separation, often going from one to the next without returning to the Temple, but the Council had put their foot down after his latest tangle with a small fleet of slavers, and refused to send him anywhere but Coruscant when he called in for further orders.

Then of course as soon as Master Thompkins had gotten her hands on him and started clucking over the injuries he’d taken in the last several months, healed though most of them were, he’d been forbidden to do anything but heal for at least fifteen days.

Ridiculous. He’d applied bacta. He had the Force. He was fully functional. There was no reason he should be spending three weeks visiting the Temple Healers daily to be scolded and scanned and Force-healed of what amounted to little more than _contusions_.

Given a choice of how to spend enforced sick leave, Bruce would have dropped himself into a healing trance for a Coruscanti week or so, to emerge very thoroughly healed and without having to experience the tedious interim. But he knew that, if he did that, both Grandmaster Yoda and his own old master would give him identical narrow-lipped looks and eyeball him dryly and say something about self-knowledge and self-restraint and the responsibility of a Jedi to confront his limits.

It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the Archives, or had difficulty with meditation. It was just that there was a limit to how much of either he had the _patience_ for when he was unable to _do_ anything productive!

That was what had led him to stalking the dueling salles at several hours before dawn. In restlessness only, unfortunately, not with the intent of training. Last time he’d done more than the very basic ‘sabre kata his medical restrictions permitted, Leslie had somehow found out within ten minutes and sent a young apprentice healer down with a message threatening him with indefinite conscious immersion in a bacta tank, where she could keep an eye on him, if he didn’t stop straining that shoulder and that knee.

The Temple was home, of course, but there were times he hated it.

The salles were at least fairly deserted. Nocturnal Jedi, insomniac Jedi, and Jedi whose sleep cycles hadn’t reset to Coruscanti time since their last missions were about at this hour, of course, but they were in the minority. The dim midnight halls of the vast ancient building were peaceful, the few ongoing midnight training sessions conducted mostly in solitary silence.

If Leslie had found him out via informant, the late hour might be enough to avoid her vigilance, but if she was making use of the security holos, and he defied her commands by ducking into one of those salles and getting a decent workout in, he would find himself imprisoned in the Healing Halls tomorrow.

…unless he sliced the system, of course.

“Sithspit!” someone swore. Someone young. Bruce raised his eyebrows, amusement pulling at the corner of his mouth, and abandoned his plotting for the moment to duck into the observation loft. Empty, empty…Initiate.

Large, for a Human who by definition could not be more than twelve, with striking red hair, and pulling a face at his own training sabre before taking his stance and launching into his kata.

A Form V kata that was most definitely not taught to Initiates.

It had been copied, Bruce determined after several seconds, watching the places where the boy dropped his elbow or let his foot trail, from someone fairly skilled but not excessively so. Which meant the boy had been spying on adult Jedi, but _that_ was not particularly surprising considering that he was here, alone, practicing lightsaber forms he shouldn’t know, when his clan had indubitably been sent to bed for the night.

The Initiate overextended his next lunge and overbalanced, his training ‘sabre flickering out as he caught himself with his right hand, smoothly but almost too late. He stayed on the floor to punch it, the blow pulled enough that while his knuckles doubtless stung even against the springy plas of the sale flooring, there should be no real injury. “Reeking spawn of a demented Hutt and a Sith’s left big toenail,” the boy muttered. And got up again.

Part of Bruce itched to go down, interrupt, and make the boy stop training himself wrong. Because he was _talented_ ; anyone could tell that. Copying the third Djem So kata even imperfectly was no small feat, and Bruce had never actually _taught_ that kata before—Dick was all Ataru, had only studied even Soresu with any dedication once he accepted from hard experience that sometimes his strength might wear down while he still needed to fight—but had learned it himself so long ago that he could do it sleeping. He _had_ , on one particularly stressful mission along the Trade Spine.

(Dick had thrown things at him to wake him up, rather than come within range. Smart boy.)

But if he went down he would have to admit he had been watching, and possibly deal with whoever had responsibility for the boy’s clan. And it would be cruel, as a recognizable Master, to show interest in an Initiate that age, when he was not looking for a padawan.

It was possible, after all, that the boy used his sleeping hours to train merely from love of the blade—certainly there _was_ more than a little of that in his movements and in his Force-presence—but the frustration, the near-desperation with which he pushed himself through his stolen forms…that spoke to calculation. He hoped to prove himself so astonishingly proficient with his lightsaber that someone would _have_ to choose him.

Bruce turned away. However Leslie was conducting her spying, she had her duties to occupy her. If she couldn’t _locate_ him, she would put off his harassment until he reappeared.

If he dodged her long enough, she’d give up, even if she _would_ store up the frustration to devote extra energy to haranguing him the next time he came in injured. And it had been too long since he had visited Coruscant’s underbelly.

* * *

Eighteen hours later found him walking homeward up the dim forgotten maintenance corridor that had been his favored unofficial exit from, and entrance back into, the Temple since his padawan days, on a knee that was only _slightly_ stiff, thank you. He would admit his shoulder was sore, though not to Leslie, because _that_ had been punched, not overworked.

He never drew his lightsaber when going incognito in the city, but he never lost the fights he stumbled into, either.

The Security Forces didn’t have much presence on any level below thirty, and none at all below fifty-five, and it showed. Bruce had never been comfortable with that; even before the Darksider who had cut down his first Master had disappeared into the belly of the eternal city, it had upset him in a childish way that the Jedi Temple shared a planet with such violent, crime-ridden chaos and so much injustice. And that they spent so much time looking away into the stars.

If the Jedi could not even keep peace and order on their homeworld, within sight of their own Temple, what _use_ were they?

He couldn’t do much alone, even when he was on-world and not gallivanting across the galaxy, but he had a reputation by now, one that had nothing to do with his position as Jedi Master. A reputation, and _extensive contacts_ , which made the whole endeavor defensible on grounds of aiding his official duties. Dick had loved it.

He stumbled very slightly on his stiff knee, and in the same moment a small form rocketed around the nearest corner and slammed headfirst into his stomach.

To the child’s credit, he clearly felt the coming collision in the Force and tried to dodge, but momentum overcame him. Bruce himself had been vaguely aware of a rapid nearby Force-presence, but the Force had carried no sense of warning, and he had expected the life-form to be moving along a corridor above this one, somewhere within the Temple proper, since there was no reason for anyone but droids to be down here, and he hadn’t heard any footsteps.

That latter was also, he supposed, to the child’s credit.

Muzzling his first, defensive reflex took all his focus and a death-clutch on the Force—his nerves were wound much too tight, and while he trusted himself enough to be sure he wouldn’t have seriously _hurt_ the child, the probability that he would have subdued him with undue violence, as an unexpected opponent who’d landed a blow to his vital regions, was one to be avoided.

“Watch it!” the hard-skulled little Human snapped as he reeled backward with the force of his impact. Bruce caught him by the back of the tunic when it looked as though he might overbalance, and raised his eyebrows.

It was the redheaded Initiate from last night—but that wasn’t an Initiate’s tunic that he wore. Striking hair notwithstanding, the boy could have blended into the Coruscanti undercity without a ripple, and no doubt that was exactly what he had intended.

Sneaking out during sleep hours to practice was one thing, but right now he should still be in afternoon classes. And even during their free time, Initiates weren’t permitted to roam the city at will. For good reason.

That Bruce was impressed a child had found the same route out of the Temple that his master had long ago shown _him_ was a fact best left unacknowledged.

“I believe that’s my line,” he said dryly.

The Initiate shrugged out of his grip, which Bruce allowed, with narrow eyes. “Initiate,” Bruce said firmly, and the boy’s eyes widened; he shied back, turning his head aside as though he hoped there was still time to hide his face, ducked around Bruce, and _ran_.

Bruce could have caught him. Even without relying on the Force, only on longer legs. But he didn’t: the boy had trusted his feelings, seen through the disguise, recognized a full-fledged Jedi accosting him just outside what he had probably believed to be his own private secret passage.

And been _horrified_.

The tenor of the horror was more complicated than mere childish fear of punishment—in fact, it was barely fear at all, except for a kind of dread that was part of that determination the boy had shown in the dueling salle the day before, standing up over and over again in the face of his own failure. It disoriented Bruce to pick up such strong and distinct emotional impressions without conscious effort, as that had never been one of his particular strengths even with those he knew well, but more troubling was the reaction itself.

What would drive so talented a Jedi Initiate so far out of bounds? So consistently, too, for these excursions into the wilds of Coruscant were plainly habitual, to judge by the confidence the boy had shown right up until he recognized Bruce as a Jedi. And, come to think of it, while few outside the Order invoked the Sith in their cursing anymore, that mention of a Hutt had had more the tenor of spacer slang.

Those adult Jedi who tended to draw Rim-World missions occasionally developed a tendency to swear like spacers and frequently a dislike of Hutts as a species, but those Jedi didn’t often have contact with Initiates, to pass their bad habits on.

Did that mean his mystery Initiate liked to spend time at the spaceports? Well. In any case. He could report this to whoever was in charge of Initiates and let them sort out their own disciplinary problem. But they were obviously incompetent, and he would prefer not to deal with being interrogated about his movements and decisions. He got enough of that from Master Thompkins.

Besides. Something wasn’t right.

Frowning, he progressed steadily— _not_ limping—through the concealed door and into the bowels of the Jedi Temple.

* * *

Leslie ranted and raved and—he should have known—extended his medical restriction by another two weeks. He didn’t mind as much as he would have expected—he was busy picking at the puzzle that was that strange little Initiate.

No Jedi youngling should run _away_ from the Temple when he felt threatened.

It was not easy to obtain information about a particular Initiate whose name one did not know without—and this was crucial— _without_ anyone knowing about it. It wasn’t by any means beyond his abilities, but it would take _effort_ , precise, careful effort that it seemed more than a little absurd to expend on a self-assigned intelligence operation _within_ the Order. He hadn’t been assigned a mission to spy on other Jedi since the training exercises during his junior Padawan years, and assigning one to _himself…_.

Absurd.

More than absurd.

 _Force preserve us if he ever Falls_ , a Council member had said to Bruce’s master, once, not too long before he faced the Trials. It hadn’t been meant for his ears, but he’d always been curious, and ever since the night he had survived the deaths of Knight Thomas and Knight Martha, he had made it his business to always know as much about everything as possible. Ignorance was death.

Or worse.

 _My apprentice is no more fearsome than any other Jedi, surely,_ Alfred had replied, in that dry, oh-so-Coruscanti voice of his, subtly reproving Master Garrick. It was not strictly accurate—Bruce’s blade skills had then already been lightyears beyond those of nearly all his age-mates, and shown no signs of stultifying—but it was appreciated.

The Council Master had snorted. _I am not **talking** about his potential for violence, Master Pennyworth,_ he’d said. _I mean that in all likelihood, if he became lost, none of us would be able to tell until he decided to show it._

Bruce had known what he meant—knew the way he held himself apart, and the way he watched, and the way he very nearly _skulked_ about the margins when forced into group interactions, were all regarded with suspicion. Not necessarily as signs of wrongdoing in themselves, though some of his age-mates certainly thought so, but as behaviors that would make it easy to keep secrets.

And when one factored in his talent for suppressing his Force-presence, and the regularity with which he employed it even when there was no _reason_ anyone else could detect—yes. It was true. Most of the ways the Jedi would know of a betrayal among their number were already channels of connection which he avoided by habit. And that made him suspicious.

Shouldn’t the protectors of the galaxy be able to trust one another?

He’d sneered at the childish thought as soon as he had it. The Order was _built_ around distrust—not the cold, killing kind you found amongst criminals, but distrust nonetheless. Force-sensitive children were raised identically, together, under the eyes of the most powerful and proven of the Order, at the heart of the Republic. Failures were shipped to the Service Corps, where they could be watched for the span of their natural lives, and every Knight not a solitary Watchman was bound deeply into the fellowship of his own kind, constantly returning to Coruscant and supervision. It was home, and safety, and security, but it was also control. Ever since the Ruusan Reformations, the Jedi Order had been structured around the effort to ensure that there would never be another Skere Khan.

Jedi Fell. Not often, but it _happened_. The danger was that a Jedi might Fall, and none recognize it until too late.

 _The Sith have always been born and reborn within the Jedi_ , the first Darksider he had ever raised his lightsaber against had told him, laughing, when he was sixteen. _I can feel your hate, boy. You would look good in black._

Bruce had not killed the being. Had struck to subdue, and halted once the defeat was sure, and taken them into custody.

Not because he had _wanted_ to be merciful. Not even entirely for the sake of the Code. But because if he had _not_ kept the tainted Force-user alive, it would have been for the wrong reasons. And he would not let himself Fall. Not for anything, let alone something so petty as his own pride.

The next time the mystery Initiate entered the hidden passage out into the city, Bruce’s wrist-com chimed. His knee was by this point almost entirely recovered—it had been three appallingly boring days—and he made good time to the outlet point, quick enough to see the boy let himself out into the abandoned ductwork between plates that would let him out onto Coruscant’s level eleven, if he climbed up. Twelve, if he climbed down.

Silently, his Force-presence tamped down to nothing, Bruce followed.

The passage the child chose to follow once he was outside the Temple ultimately let out at level 28, a level which this close to the Senatorial district was noisome and somewhat grimy but had relatively few inhabitants that were truly destitute. The further you got to the far side of the planet at this level, the grimmer conditions became. The disguised Initiate darted his way between passerby and under a hoverbike with consummate ease, almost as though he was actively trying to lose his tail, and for all the world like a Coruscant native.

Well—he was, of course, a Coruscant native; he was a Jedi. He’d grown up here. But generally speaking, young Jedi were only slightly more comfortable on the lower levels of the ecumenopolis than the average Senator, and most of that was down to confidence in their training and the Force.

This Initiate might trust in the Force, but he also seemed to trust in the locale, and that….

That was, frankly, fascinating.

* * *

For nearly a thousand years, Coruscant had been the sole home of the Jedi. For far longer than that, Coruscant had housed the Senate through a dozen reformations of the immortal republic on which galactic society rested, and it was from Coruscant that justice and order emanated, to mediate between the needs of all the sovereign worlds.

Coruscant was the center of civilization, the cultural heart of the Galaxy, the crown jewel of the Republic.

And Coruscant was a poisoned cinder, a world long since devoured and buried, a wretched hive of crime, poverty, and indifference that almost challenged the worst parts of the Rim for depravity.

Both these things were true.

Coruscant was a world where the Darkness and the Light were each impossibly strong.

Coruscant was his home.

Bruce had inquired into his own records, a year after his first master was killed, and had not been surprised to find he had been born on the same world where he had grown up. Not in the low, desperate levels of the planet that had scarred him so, when a red lightsaber had bitten into his master’s chest and out his back and severed the head of his master’s partner, but in the premier hospital of the Senatorial District, where the requisite test for midichlorian levels had been performed automatically, and the number registered so high that his parents had accepted the need to give him up for training.

His father had been from an ancient Coruscanti political dynasty, only a rung or two below the redoubtable Valorums, and his mother a former two-term Senator from the mid-Rim world of Alderaan. Despite their respective entanglements with the corporate sector, they seemed to have been reasonably good people. If they had not died in a ship-crash when he was four, he would probably have reinitiated contact with them eventually, as an adult, and met whatever siblings he would have undoubtedly had by then, and very likely been drawn into the fringes of their political circles.

As it was, he had spent a few years brushing off feelers from parties having a history with his family until they accepted that he was a Jedi exclusively, and the Wayne family as a political entity was defunct.

The family’s assets were, he understood, operating as a sort of semi-charitable trust, which he would be free to claim if he ever lost his mind and decided to leave the Order in favor of either business or politics.

That would never happen. But Coruscant _was_ his home.

As he watched, from a distance, Force presence still carefully muffled, the mysterious rogue Initiate darted from back door to alleyway, clearly familiar both _with_ and _to_ various mildly shady businesses and shabby tenants. Occasionally he carried a package. The obvious suspicion was that he had, inexplicably, mixed himself up in the drug trade, but Bruce didn’t think so.

There was something too bright in the Initiate’s grin as he ducked his way through the crowds, something that had been missing in the Temple. He knew that lightness set into narrow shoulders too well. That wasn’t a look of anticipating gain or profit. That was _feeling able to help._

The fierce pride that joined it, after an aggressive adolescent Zabrak who tried to take one of the mysterious parcels from him was laid out in two clean blows, was not entirely befitting a Jedi, but Bruce was in no position to judge it harshly.

He followed the boy back to the Temple around the midpoint of the night shift, more enlightened and yet with even more questions than before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's another chapter and a half of this complete and after that there's a lot of material but organization collapses, so we'll see what happens


	2. There Is No Chaos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some people brought it up, so btw red-headed Jason in this fic is because:
> 
> 1) young Obi-Wan is explicitly a redhead in the Jedi Apprentice novels that made me start relating Jedi&Padawan to Batman&Robin and 
> 
> 2) having a string of Padawans that all look _just like you_ is significantly weirder and more suspicious here, in a multi-species setting when you've got _all these kids_ available to choose from, and aren't even supposed to be seeing yourself as their dad. So I felt the need to break up the mini-me pattern a little bit because it's creepier in this cultural context. Which is honestly saying something.
> 
> I'm glad for the most part that they reversed natural redhead Jason in canon, although his first Outlaws team being all-titian would have been really funny, but it keeps being useful in fanworks.

It was after his rather ridiculous afternoon trailing the boy that Bruce finally brought him up in conversation.

“There’s a redheaded Initiate,” he said to Kal the next day, after the Kryptonian Jedi had appeared in the corridor outside his quarters with that peaceful smile of his, and had invited himself in, and had refused an offer to spar because that medical tyrant Master Thompkins had sent him a holocom even before he made planetfall, warning him about Bruce’s medical restrictions.

Kal was making Bruce breakfast instead, which he refused to appreciate. Even though growing up with Alfred had spoiled him for commissary food, and he had never gotten the knack of cooking for himself. Uninvited guests who ignored his opinions about his own state of health did not get appreciation.

“Who I keep running into,” he added, when his hulking kitchen-appropriator shot him a puzzled look for declaring the existence and hair color of a specific Jedi child. “Did that become common at some point while I was off in deep space? Stumbling over Initiates out of bounds?”

“How old?” Kal asked. A little bend in his eyebrows clearly imagining a thread of a thing little more than a youngling, scrambling about unprotected and lost. As if there was much danger to be found in any of the open levels of the Temple, and as if Bruce would have let _that_ situation go uncorrected after noticing it.

“Twelve.” Maybe a little more of his frustration leaked into his voice than he would have liked.

A smirk tugged at the younger Master’s mouth as he gave one of the frying dumplings in the pan a flip. “Maybe they’re stalking you?”

Kal-El Kent was only the third Jedi of his species in recorded history, and would probably be the last, as the planet had been destroyed in a tectonic cataclysm twenty standard years ago, taking its fiercely insular population with it. The previous two had had exemplary careers but were overshadowed by the one recorded Kryptonian Sith Lord, and Kal had always suffered under some rather ridiculous expectations and suspicions as a result of his racial advantages.

It was obvious, though, to anyone who actually _spoke_ to him that he had been born to be Jedi. He had a knack for serenity that Bruce would never equal if he did nothing but meditate for the next sixty cycles.

This did not deprive the man of his Force-granted right to make himself annoying. Bruce gave him a _look._

“Is that a problem you’ve been having? _Master_ Kent?”

Kal had been fast-tracked to Master just this year, on the strength of his multitudinous achievements, and Bruce was quite certain that unless he somehow managed to get himself killed, Kal would in due time be offered a seat on the Council. He had never been sure why Kal had chosen to befriend him (though he suspected it had something to do with the sidelong looks they’d both tended to collect), but he had never found himself quite able to turn the man away, especially once the Council noticed that Wayne tolerated Kent with a minimum of friction, and started assigning them a large percentage of the most dangerous combat and rescue missions together.

Now that they were two of the youngest Masters in the Order, they seemed likely to see even more of one another.

Dick had always looked up to Kal enough to make Bruce jealous, though the emotion was inappropriate for a Jedi, and he had done his best to release it. The three of them had made an excellent team.

“Only a little,” Kal said mildly. “So, this Initiate. Human, I’m guessing?”

“A boy,” Bruce confirmed.

“Near age-out, then. And you _don’t_ think he’s hoping to get your attention?”

“He _ran away_ last time he bumped into me,” Bruce said flatly.

“Are you that scary or was he just embarrassed?”

Bruce didn’t dignify that question with an answer. “Why would Initiates be stalking me and not you, anyway?”

Kal flipped a steaming grain-square out of its pan and layered the savoury egg concoction from the other pan over it. “Well,” he said mildly, sprinkling the result with a pinch of some dried herb and setting it before his host, “ _my_ old pupil isn’t the most impressive new Knight in the Temple.”

Chastened, Bruce started to eat his breakfast, while Kal-el turned back to the cooker to make some more for himself.

The perennial inconvenience to their smooth teamwork had, for several years, been Kal’s former padawan, James Olsen. He had been a nice young man, very sincere and hardworking, and fully grounded in the Light, but his skills and power in the Force had been thoroughly ordinary. He couldn’t measure up to Jedi Masters, of course. But he also couldn’t measure up to Bruce’s padawan, who was five years his junior.

When it had been only Olsen and his Master, from what Bruce could tell, they had operated smoothly around the gap in capability, each functioning in his appropriate scope and Kal shielding his padawan from the worst, but when the other pair were added Olsen had perpetually, unavoidably fallen short. Either they set too much on his shoulders, or underutilized Dick, or assigned the much younger boy noticeably greater responsibility than his senior—either way, efficiency was lost or hurt was done.

There was no shame in not being a genius. But Olsen had grown to see himself as a burden, and in time lost faith in himself, and his place among the Jedi. It had been a subtle unhappiness, but it had left him vulnerable to the galaxy’s harsher distresses, with fewer reserves of resolve and faith in the Force to draw upon in dark times.

Dick had felt responsible, when the older padawan left the Order. He’d come to Bruce crying about it, because they had still been close enough for that, then.

Bruce had promised that it was _not_ Dick’s fault in the slightest. It was the fault of the pirates who’d captured Olsen, primarily, and the hurts they’d done him. It was the fault also of his master who had failed to protect him, and to make him understand that he was a perfectly adequate Jedi just as he was. Of the Council for setting Olsen up to feel inadequate, of Bruce himself for not finding some solution to the strain; possibly even of Olsen, for not being able to release his emotions and personal ambition enough to accept reality.

It was certainly not the fault of the junior Padawan who had done nothing more or less than his duty, and always been kind, but Dick had never quite let go of his sense of responsibility. He’d taken less joy in his own skills for nearly a year after that, and all too soon after he’d recovered his enthusiasm Bruce had been made a Master. Then Dick had begun to agitate to take the Trials, and…well. Bruce set the feelings aside yet again.

Olsen seemed happy now, according to Kal. He’d set himself up as some kind of holographic artist on his birthworld, and seemed more at peace with himself now than he ever had as a Jedi. Bruce had once felt some sympathy for the combination of gladness and sorrow this brought his friend: that his former padawan was content, but that he had had no hand in shaping that contentment; had in fact been an obstacle that had had to be removed.

Now it irritated him.

Kal started a new, lighter conversation when he joined Bruce at the table with his own egg-concoction, and they chewed their way through the usual Temple gossip, and recurring half-serious debate about lightsaber forms and how much one’s favored form should be chosen based on the capacities of the body as opposed to one’s personal philosophy of combat, and an exchange of anecdotes from their latest missions.

They had both run into pirates and Bruce was seriously considering compiling all recent Jedi reports mentioning pirate activity and submitting the data to Judicial, because to a considerable extent keeping interplanetary trade and transit clean, fair, and minimally subject to predation was what the Republic was _for_ , and clearly something was going increasingly awry with the latter part of this mandate recently.

Kal changed the subject, tactfully, after letting him rant about statistics for a few minutes, and turned out to have been personally present at the incident everyone had been gossiping about _last_ time Bruce had been in-Temple, when Master Yoda had been pushed into one of the water features in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, and rather than catch himself through some impressive feat of Ataru maneuvering as one might expect, elected to plunge bonelessly over the artificial falls and into the pool below, for a peaceful swim.

Bruce was fairly sure it had been a psychological punishment of the Knight who’d crashed into him, giving her at least half a minute of belief that she had somehow accidentally _killed_ the Grandmaster. Kal was less convinced, but even with his on-the-spot report couldn’t actually refute the theory.

Master Yoda’s comfortable afternoon float had set a very bad example for the Initiates, though. Incidents of illicit fountain swimming were up by 700%.

Breakfast was gone and cleaned up after and they both had business to be getting to. Kal finished his tea before Bruce did, shrugged back into his outer robe and clipped on his lightsaber in preparation to leave, but didn’t reach for the door panel.

“By the way…I thought I should warn you,” Kal said, fidgeting just slightly, the way he did when raising a personally awkward subject. Bruce waited. “Dick holomessaged me. He’ll be back on Coruscant within a few days.”

Bruce had to rely on the Force to keep his momentary surge of emotion under control. Anger. Frustration. Something approaching panic. He had managed to avoid being on the same planet as his former apprentice since the young man had become a Knight. If he weren’t grounded on medical orders, he could have kept it up indefinitely.

It was a big Temple. He could continue to avoid Dick perfectly well.

But he would _know._ Missions too dangerous or delicate to take an apprentice on, those had happened. They had been separated many times over the course of Dick’s apprenticeship, and at interstellar distances a Force-bond was generally silent, absent major catastrophe. Silence just meant everything was probably alright.

If he was still on Coruscant when Knight Grayson returned, he would be able to sense him.

And then he would be unable to ignore the change. A bond too attenuated by distance to sense anything through it? That was easily tolerated. Familiar, even. A bond blocked…

 _Better than severed_ , he told himself, and set his teeth.

“Is that so,” he replied noncommittally. Took a long swallow of tea.

Bruce knew that Kal thought it was ridiculous that _he_ kept in regular contact with his former padawan, who was no longer Jedi, while Bruce did not with his, a Knight in good standing. Since he also knew this was a perfectly _correct_ belief, he simply pretended not to see the look.

Plenty of Knights and Masters severed their attachment to their students with the Padawan braid, and former master and pupil became no more to each other than fellow Jedi whose skills they knew well, with the shadow of an old bond hanging silent. There was nothing untoward in that. In many ways it was the most perfect expression possible of the modern Code.

That no one had ever expected Bruce and Dick to be such a pair was irrelevant. That ‘releasing attachment’ and ‘devotedly avoiding someone’ were very nearly polar opposites was a truth Bruce was not prepared to confront.

“Yes,” said Kal, fiddling with the end of his own sleeve in a way most unbecoming of a Jedi Master. He noticed, and breathed the tension out. His hands calmed. “He’s worried about you, you know,” he said. “We all are.”

Bruce looked away. ‘All’ probably included Alfred and _his_ old friends, and the few of Bruce’s own crèche-mates he had any contact with nowadays, and the crowd of _Kal’s_ crèche-mates and former mission partners who considered Bruce to be roughly within their social circle by proxy, even if he barely knew them.

It was not helpful or comforting to consider that even with his usual self-isolating ways his recent hard push had been noticed, and was being judged. By people outside the healing corps.

If he wasn’t careful, he’d wake up to Master Yoda judgmentally levitating tea in his quarters someday soon.

He knew he wouldn’t wake up to Dick here, though. Even if he _was_ still keyed into the security system and could let himself in at a touch. It reflected poorly on him as a Jedi that he half-wanted to continue worrying everyone who knew him still _more_ , in hopes of provoking his former Padawan to come back and remonstrate with him about limits and self-care. But at least he had the self-restraint not to be planning to actually _do_ it.

“I’ll be more careful,” he said, defeated (as always, when it really mattered) by Jedi Master Kent.

Kal nodded, reached for the door panel, stopped.

“This Initiate,” Kal said. “I know you wouldn’t have thought it was worth mentioning if he was just following you. Is the Force telling you something?”

Bruce glowered halfheartedly. “Go away, Kent.”

Kal smiled, because even without the Force he could tell there was no real bite to this annoyance, and let himself out.

Bruce sighed into the succeeding quiet. He knew he’d brought it up so Kal would ask that. Because even though he had no intention of addressing the question out loud, being asked had brought the answer into sharp focus in his mind. _Yes._ He could feel the boy much too distinctly in the Force, and Jedi did not believe in coincidence.

Grumbling to himself, he sank into the meditative posture. And hour later, he surfaced, even more out of temper. It was undeniable: he had, tenuous and frail, the distinct beginnings of a Force-bond with the impossible brat.

In consideration of that fact, he dismissed the reservations of his pride, accessed a carefully-rendered-anonymous terminal in an isolated corner of the Archives, and broke into the crèche records. There were currently over a dozen twelve-year-old male Humans across four Clans; his quarry turned out to have the name Jason Todd.

Fairly good grades; not the best, increasing failure to apply himself in recent months. Much better when motivated. _Excellent_ blade work; sometimes sloppy on defense. A large number of truancy marks, though not as many as Bruce would have expected; either the boy was actually quite good at subtlety, or being out of bounds twice in forty hours was a sharp increase from his usual misbehavior.

A history of fighting other Initiates, usually claiming afterward that they had either started it or been bullying someone else. Warnings for excessive aggression in sparring. He’d been slightly behind his age group at meditation, but since caught up. Good pilot potential, though, and no trouble connecting to the Force. A good deal of raw power, though not as much as Dick had had at the same age.

Then again, Dick had been training intensively with his own master and logging field hours for over four years, by the time he was twelve.

Bruce noted the fighting, and the uneven focus, as drawbacks, but the only other item of note in the boy’s file was that he had not been identified as a candidate for Jedi training in the usual way, via hospital records or on Search. He had instead been one of the infants abandoned on the Temple steps.

This was not particularly uncommon—Coruscant was a wealthy world, but its tens of billions of inhabitants included so many of the poor, and so many of these desperately so, that many beings found after breeding that they could not support their spawn, and the twin Jedi reputations for walking off with people’s children and for protecting the helpless had made them an obvious recipient of unwanted offspring.

Most of these abandoned children were placed through adoption agencies, or sent to the Jedi Agricorps worlds or other parts of the Service Corps, but all below the age limit were of course tested for potential, and Jason Todd had been just young enough, and more than strong enough, to be accepted for training.

Jedi Initiates were allowed to know their own planets of origin for the asking; making a secret of it would only confer upon the knowledge the lure of the forbidden, and thus far more importance than it deserved. Many never asked. Todd had been four years old; if he did not remember the underbelly of Coruscant directly, he had clearly taken an interest once he learned, and taken it upon himself to investigate his origins. Bruce wondered what the attraction was. Was he looking for his family? It would be an odd sort of thing for a Jedi to put so much energy into, but then, Jason Todd was clearly an odd young Jedi.

And perhaps it would not be so odd, for someone insecure about his place in the Order to look to his roots.

Bruce sympathized. His own childhood fascination with the city-world had gone from vague to complex and profound on one bitter night that smelled in memory of cheap fuel and charred flesh. Almost the polar opposite of the boy’s likely motivations, but still. They had both been born here, and could not shake Coruscant from their bones. He could hardly look down on a young Jedi for doing something he had once done himself.

Not that Alfred had let him get away with much unsupervised sneaking, after the first few months. Whoever took this boy in hand would need to set at least as strict a supervision, and inflict at least as strict a series of penalties when it was (inevitably, in both cases) evaded.

…and he was already contemplating the logistics of training the boy. _Damn it._ To all seven Sith hells.

* * *

It didn’t take long to find the child out of bounds again, though enough days had passed in the span of time he’d already spent diverted by the mystery that his enforced medical leave was approaching an end, assuming Master Thompkins didn’t extend things again.

Jason’s eyes widened at finding the same Jedi waiting for him in a different escape tunnel, obviously kicking himself for having thought the issue resolved the first time, and he turned as if to flee again.

“Initiate Todd,” Bruce said sternly, rather than make a grab, and the boy wilted in place, accepting that he had been well caught. Fleeing in the moment would hardly help him, when the older Jedi knew him by name.

“Yes, Master?” he asked, turning back and assuming the posture of calm attentiveness that was taught to Jedi younglings from a young age as the most polite way to convey deference. By the time one was an adult, this demeanour could be pulled over all but the worst emotional turmoil, to fake serenity if necessary for the sake of non-Jedi depending on one; in the meantime it helped maintain order in classrooms.

“You were observed,” Bruce said, although considering their now repeated meetings on the way out of the Temple, he assumed use of the passive voice would only slightly conceal _I watched you_ , “carrying parcels and messages throughout the Devaronian District of levels twenty-seven through twenty-nine.” The Devaronian District had not been primarily populated by Devaronians in centuries, but that sort of name tended to linger, and was still on all the maps.

“Please, Master, it’s not what you think,” the Initiate whispered.

“You don’t know what I think,” Bruce said—toneless except for a note of chiding, but it seemed to reassure the child anyway. “Explain.”

Jason Todd straightened his shoulders slightly, licked his lower lip. Made a very creditable attempt at releasing his panic into the Force. “Alright. You know, Master, that the lower levels have a sort of, er, shadow economy?”

Bruce inclined his head. The term could easily have come up in the Initiate curriculum, and he wasn’t even offended that the boy wasn’t sure he’d know that deep within Coruscant, actual credits began to be a luxury.

“Right. Well, I don’t have anything to trade, obviously,” because Jedi did not own things, though Bruce doubted the boy had never snuck commissary food out into the slums to barter or share, “but a lot of people down there can’t afford a working comm, so by running messages I generate some value. And then I take what I get for that to somebody who uses it to make something, and then I take _that_ to somebody who’ll trade her for it, and…uh….” He trailed off. “Like that. Just, a whole train of trades. It helps people get by.”

Bruce was not sure what he thought of the worthiness people who accepted the help of a child when it consisted of going places too dangerous for them to traverse themselves, but then again twelve was nearly an adult, by some standards, and presumably they were trusting in his own accurate profession of having a skillset well suited to navigating the dangerous terrain.

Jason Todd fidgeted. “How much trouble am I in, Master?”

“From me? For assigning yourself Jedi missions within your current skillset? None,” Bruce determined, and watched the child brighten. “For being so repeatedly out of bounds that you’ve had time to insinuate yourself into the local Coruscanti economy…that I think is in the hands of your Initiate-master.”

Bruce had to suppress a smile as the boy wilted again.

“Have you anything else you’d like to tell me?” he inquired.

The Initiate looked up, searching his face as though for a clue about what he expected to hear. There was nothing in particular, but he found himself hoping the boy would volunteer some information, some further explanation of his bizarre personal habits.

“No, Master.”

“You’ll be turning thirteen soon, won’t you,” Bruce asked experimentally.

“Yes, Master.”

“And why do you not yet have a master, Initiate?”

He was curious what Jason would say. A lie would be a mark against him.

Conflict flashed across the child’s face, and into his Force-presence. He dropped his eyes. “My teachers say…I have problems with my temper,” he admitted, very quietly, trailing a toe over the patterned tile.

There was a despair in the way he said it that reminded Bruce uncomfortably of a slave he had once seen walking back into a Rim-world market to be resold, a certainty that there was no escape from the trap that had closed around him. He knew he would be caught in a lie, and that it could only harm him, but the truth was its own kind of doom.

That was indeed what his records said, when pared down to their essentials. It was in line with what Bruce himself had observed.

Anger. Of course that was the long and short of it.

Most Jedi would much rather have a moderately skilled padawan who would never breathe in the direction of Darkness, than a genius who might Fall.

Bruce himself had first been apprenticed even younger than Dick, and never experienced the rising fear of an unchosen Initiate approaching their thirteenth birthday and exile from all they had known and dreamed…but if Alfred had not stepped forward to claim him, after that wretched night when he had watched Knight Thomas and his partner be cut down, it was hard to say what would have become of him.

He might very well have been returned to his youngling Clan and languished as an Orphan, shied away from because of the scars on his soul and the seeds of hate festering in him, for hate _of_ the Dark Side was still hate, and could still lead one into the Darkness.

Anger and stubbornness were flaws he knew very deeply. He might well have set records as the youngest Master in at least a century, based on skill alone, had the Council not hesitated for years over the flares of temper that still sometimes escaped him.

Never _controlled_ him. But escaped his control, all the same.

Jason Todd was impatient, disobedient, proud, and so determined he bordered on the driven. He was also brimming with potential. It was no surprise he was one of the last twenty children left in his immediate cohort.

But he had a good heart, and he had immense inner strength. And he deserved to have someone choose him.

“Jason,” Bruce said, with an utter calm he did not quite feel, “I would like to take you on as my student.”

Shock overcame the boy’s face, the expression of a being who has hoped while knowing their hope is an impossibility. His mouth dropped open. “Y-you mean it? You’re sure?”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. Did the boy really think he would say such a thing without meaning it?

“ _Yes!_ ” Jason whooped, with an exuberant jump, and then seemed to collect himself and dropped into a stiffly correct bow. “I mean, I am honored, Master Wayne.”

Bruce felt a smile stealing across his face in a way it had not since the deep disagreements with Dick began, and he set one hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Come with me, Padawan,” he instructed. They should make this official as soon as possible.

Uncertainty was a cruel thing to inflict on a young Jedi.

Fear, after all, led to the Dark Side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of the Basically Done Part that I Had To Share. Let me know if you're interested in seeing more of this Jedi Batman Padawan Drama!


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